Here comes #Ingenuity's #Flight62, tomorrow Thursday Oct 12, 2023. The #MarsHelicopter will fly out to Jurabi Point with a record speed of 10m/s and back to the same airfield where it will take off from.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so rather than release this as realistic 2 years ago, when the footprints were first dated, scientists went looking for more evidence, and found it.
One of my favorite things about good #science is that as we keep learning new things and finding more evidence, we can reevaluate " #truth ," and move forward.
New location for #Perseverance on Sol 932, even further into the "broken slab" area to the NW, which however doesn't seem to be difficult for the rover.
A 2km tall x 60m wide dust devil, 4km away and moving at about 19km/h was captured by #Perseverance on Sol 899. Its height was calculated by measuring the length of its shadow, in the manner of Thales of Miletus. 🤓
The gif in the post shows only the bottom 118m of it, but still, it's quite a spectacle as it traverses Thorofare Ridge from east to west.
And here is the estimated landing location of #Ingenuity's #Flight60. The straight part of the flight path is guessed, but the last part before landing, and the landing should be close to reality.
An illuminating talk today by Ken Belitz #USGS and the 2023 Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer. He spoke on machine learning methods applied to #hydrogeology
Someone has tasked #USGS / #NASA Landsat satellites to acquire nighttime images of a large area on the south and west coast of #Iceland My guess is that it is related to the Fagradalsfjall eruption and lava field thermal properties. Both #Landsat8 and #Landsat9 have been acquiring on an ascending path (around 22:30 Local/GMT). The visual spectrum bands are pitch black, but the TIR bands (brightness temperature bands 10 and 11) are spectacular if it’s a cloud free image like yesterday! #qgis
You like #geography, right? You will love this story of the #EROS program. I was floored at how early they were allowing internet download of data, for instance. This is awesome.
Watch "#USGS EROS: Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence" on YouTube
New location estimate for #Perseverance on Sol 909, RMC 44.4864. The rover ended up next to a small crater. The path is an educated guess, extracted from NAVCAM images.
According to the #USGS, 11 #earthquakes have struck the area of #Hawaii over a period of less than one hour, beginning at 20:47:18 (UTC-04:00) at a depth of 1.9 km and ending at 21:34:10 at a depth of 0.5 km, with magnitudes ranging from 2.6 to 3.5
The question becomes: are these relatively weak quakes coming in anticipation of a stronger one?
New location for #Perseverance on Sol 908: RMC 44.3978.
Initial estimate, based solely on metadata, has the rover about 280m to the west, descending to lower ground through a smooth opening on the edge of Mandu Wall, right on the planned route.
With the ink that printed the announcement of a successful #Flight57 still wet (yeah, that was the cliche back in the day of paper news), #Ingenuity's #Flight58 is now announced for Sep 11, 2023:
Here is a visibility plot from #Perseverance's new location at RMC 44.4864.
Tosol, Sol 910, #Ingenuity's #Flight58 is expected to take place. With some luck, some part of it might even be captured by one of rover's cameras, as both takeoff and landing locations appear to be visible. The rover seems to have rushed to be at a suitable location. 😀